Harakiri

Harakiri is the third studio album by System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian. It was released on July 10, 2012 as a follow-up to his 2010 album Imperfect Harmonies. The album also constitutes the first of four then-upcoming albums, the other three being Orca, Jazz-Iz-Christ and Fuktronic. Background Tankian has described the album as "the most up-tempo punk rock oriented record that I've written probably since the System days." In the same interview, he also confirmed that a 2013 world tour would likely follow in support of the album. Hara-kiri, also known as seppuku, is a term for the ritual 'honour' suicide of Japanese samurai, with the former term being more common in speech and the latter being more literary, upper-class, and formal. The act involves self-disembowelment with a tantō (a Japanese-style dagger originating in the Heian period), slicing the abdomen from left to right. The album explores ideas of animal suicide.